Watch Now! Must See Virtual Events & A Film Festival
1. BAM:
DanceAfrica Visual Art: Omar Victor Diop
During these uncertain times, people are uniting in various ways. Artists are coming together and sharing their work, now more than ever, to connect others. BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is constantly sharing work from artists on its website. From May 14-June 14, they are celebrating the DanceAfrica festival and recognizing everyone who has helped make it so impactful. DanceAfrica showcases young entrepreneurs in Africa by highlighting their urban culture, models, artists, and fashion designers. Omar Victor Diop is one person who has helped shape the festival. Diop, a self-taught photographer from Senegal, aims to capture diversity in modern African societies. He does this by layering genres, patterns, and colors to portray the inhabitants and, at the same time, creating amazing and notable imagery. Diop’s inspiration derives from his experiences while growing up in Dakar, Senegal, where there was a great influence from American culture (including Michael Jackson) and Arab music. His project, which is recognized for showcasing the art and culture surrounding Dakar, is called The Studio of Vanities. This project is showcased on BAM’s website to recognize his work that was a part of the DanceAfrica festival in 2016. Diop’s goal for this collection was to bring focus on Dakar’s flourishing culture and to showcase everyone behind the process. He collaborates with subjects in order to correctly portray individuality. In his collection, we see a heavy use of apparel, patterns, and backdrops in order to emphasize his models’ personality, assets, and cultural attributions. Omar Victor Diop’s featured virtual collection, The Studio of Vanities, can be viewed on the website under the section for visual art.
["Aminata" 2013 Photo by Omar Victor Diop presented as part of BAM Visual Art exhibit at DanceAfrica during BAM
["Oumy Ndour" 2015 Photo by Omar Victor Diop presented as part of BAM Visual Art exhibit at DanceAfrica during BAM
["Sashakara" 2016 Photo by Omar Victor Diop presented as part of BAM Visual Art exhibit at DanceAfrica during BAM
["La guerre des femmes, 1929" 2016 Photo by Omar Victor Diop presented as part of BAM Visual Art exhibit at DanceAfrica
Tearsheet By Emma Miller.
2. British Museum
Due to COVID-19, many activities appear online. Museums all over the world are taking this opportunity to offer galleries and exhibits for virtual viewing. The British Museum has partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to create an interactive virtual experience called Museum of the World, which takes people across continents, time, and cultures while showcasing the most astonishing objects and artifacts worldwide. The interactive museum offers a timeline that ranges from 2,000,000 BC to 2000 AD and includes artwork from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. During this virtual experience, you can easily scroll through the timeline of events and see what was most impactful across these areas during each time period. The museum shares work on topics such as art and design, living and dying, power and identity, religion and belief, and trade and conflict. A neat feature about this virtual experience is that, once you click on a piece of work, it automatically connects it with other objects across the timeline. Another great feature is that, once an object on the timeline is selected, appearing on the screen is a description with audio, a Google map view where the object comes from, and related objects. This is a great way to read, listen, and explore the many works the project has to offer.
The Museum of the World is an amazing way to enhance your knowledge of cultures worldwide and dive deeper in exploring history from numerous regions. One object that stood out to me was an emu feather skirt from south-east Australia during the 1840s. At that time, Aboriginal people used tools and resources from nature to create clothing. This type of skirt is significant because it was sent to Queen Victoria for the marriage of the Princess of Wales. Other objects were gifted as well, as kind gestures to the Royal Family. Another object in the project that I found to be neat was a computer bilum bag from Melanesia.
This project explores objects from diverse cultures and could not have been successfully completed without the use of the most advanced Web Graphics Library technology available. This interactive virtual experience, which is free, can be found at britishmuseum.withgoogle.com.
Emu Feather Skirt from Aboriginal Australia
Computer Bilum Bag from Melanesia
Screenshot of Museum of the World’s virtual timeline
Live Baking Lessons Every Day at 2pm EST On Instagram!
Christina Tosi is the owner and head pastry chef of the famous Milk Bar located in New York City, New York. With people all over the world quarantining, she created an online baking club where she hosts live baking lessons every day to connect baking lovers at a time of unpredictability. Unfortunately, she paused her Bake Club because of the police brutality that is happening. Luckily, she has her lessons archived on Instagram, so I watched a past episode on Bake Club Day 60, called ‘Popcorn Your Way’ in which she showed viewers how to spice up your popcorn. She posted the ingredients the night before so viewers could be prepared for the next day. In this episode, Tosi baked caramel-cheddar popcorn with her nieces. She let them pop the popcorn in the microwave while she prepared the caramel and other hot ingredients on the stove. During her live video, she also talks about alternatives and variations of the recipes. The episode was lively and fun to watch, seeing her nieces scramble around the kitchen having so much fun. It was easy to follow along, as she shows the step-by-step the process. At the end of her video, Tosi talks about other fun variations to spice up popcorn.
Her other videos include recipes such as cake truffles, peanut butter and banana mug cake, pretzel whipped cream, grilled cheese bars, and other fun yet simple recipes. Baking can become overwhelming for some people, but, watching the episode, it was obvious that she approaches baking in a fun and light-hearted way. She has done her online baking club for 70 days now, and all of her Bake Club episodes are archived on Instagram and can be found at her account @christinatosi. All of her Bake Club recipes can be found at milkbarstore.com/bake- club.
Caramel-Cheddar Popcorn
5 cups (half batch) popcorn, still warm
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 pack mac & cheese powder
Salt
1 recipe caramel popcorn
Toss popcorn in melted butter until evenly coated. Sprinkle in cheese powder and toss until evenly coated. Salt/sugar to taste. Keep warm while making caramel popcorn above, using your cheesy popcorn in place of plain popcorn.
Article by Alexandra Lambert, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine.
We Are One Film Festival On YouTube
1. Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy
Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy is a 2013 Thai coming of age and teen drama/comedy written and directed by Thai director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit. The narrative builds up an unknown, young lady @marylony’s 410 consecutive tweets into a story of a young lady and her closest companion as the yearbook advisory group to a headmaster who tries to demolish their fantasy about creating a yearbook that they have longed for. Tweets such as “I want to buy a jellyfish” and “I want to eat a birthday cake, even though it’s not my birthday” does not stop Nawapol from creating an outstanding story of a teenager experiencing life and adding humor to that life.
At the point when things do not go the way that Mary planned, she gets gloomy. When she meets M who cannot reciprocate her feelings, she becomes irritated and discouraged. Several events that happened to Mary have resulted in her having a breakdown and causing her to spiral out of control, but she always had Suri by her side to keep her in place. Suri a companion who consistently remains close by and enduring her antics resulted in Suri not setting off to a college in Austria, but abruptly altering her perspective and remaining with her friend without giving an explanation. The straightforward, loyal, and compassionate companion meets with an unfortunate end.
This film has extraordinary performances by a group of actors who depict the sentiments of tension and fear of a youngster. Patcha Poonpiriya plays Mary and Chonnikan Netjui plays Suri. Their splendid chemistry successfully persuades the crowd to think they are inseparable at their all-girl school and only they can understand each other’s feeling and personalities.
The film shots offer a narrative style with a consistent handheld camera and gave a sentimental feeling of a trip down memory lane. This film is flawless in conveying meaningful messages from Mary’s story. It is a magnificent film to watch with loved ones with a sincere message of growing up and being a teenager.
2. Rudeboy: The Story Of Trojan Records
Rudeboy: The story of Trojan Records is a music documentary that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the London record label ‘Trojan Record’. Directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, It tells a story of the start and the downfall of the record label. The name Rudeboy refers to a Jamaican slang term for a well-dressed young man frequently with criminal association. Trojan Records, which introduced reggae, ska, and rock to the U.K music scene, popularized artists such as Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff.
From the beginning, they faced many obstacles in introducing Jamaican music to the British youth culture; however, they manage to become a popular music genre in the late 1960s to early 1970s. The records the label popularized include “Rudy, A message to you,” “The Israelites,” and “You Can Get it if You Really Want”. These have become some of the most influential records in the British music scene.
This documentary also includes legendary artist such as Ken Boothe, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Toots Hibbert, Neville Staple, Dave Baker, Marcia Griffiths, Lloyd Coxsone, Dandy Livingstone, Pauline Beck, Derrick Morgan, and others who tell their stories about the music business during this time and the battles they had. The directors reproduced the story with an emotional recreation to enable the audience to imagine and comprehend the story much more.
Racism is undoubtedly an enormous part of the difficulty they faced in spreading their music. It was unusual to play Jamaican music on the radio and TV, but, despite it all, Wembley hosted a festival dedicated to reggae and the demand for reggae has risen among the British youth without looking at skin color. The film praises how immigration and development changed mainstream society and produced an intriguing facet in the history of music.
3. Wrath Of Silence
Wrath of Silence is a 2017 action-filled film and heartfelt drama starring Yang Song as Zhang Baomin, a mute, courageous, and fierce father searching for his missing son who tends sheep in the rough mountains of northern China. Jiang Wu plays a big oil tycoon named Chang Wannian. The movie, directed and written by Yukun Xin, is not only filled with an action-packed scene but also tells the story of a corrupted oil company, led by Chang Wannian, that has taken over the mining site where Zhang Baomin is employed. The story has him losing his job as well as showing the life of a poor local miners living in the rural areas struggling to make end meets.
After running around town bringing pictures of his son and unable to locate him, Zhang Baomin thought the oil tycoon kidnapped his son and, so, he decided to confront the tycoon about the whereabouts of his son, but he got offered work. In exchange for the work, the tycoon had his bests men search for his son. Zhang Baomin declined the offer and proceed to look for his son himself, which leads him to Xu Wenjie’s kidnapped daughter. Xu Wenjie, who is a lawyer working for Chang Wannian, has something Chang Wannian needs, and this enhances the conflict in the film.
The cinematographer, He Shan, has effectively created an exquisite picture of the northern mountains along with showing the rural sides of China and the mining locales giving the film a progressively serious inclination. The music by Sylvian Wang further upgrades the power of the film, particularly the action scene, giving a restless yet tragic inclination to the audience and adding to the film’s intensity.
The film provides numerous messages about injustice to individuals from the lower class and makes a contrast with high-class individuals who are powerful and use their wealth to solve their problems and to get what they want. This eye-opening movie the reality of the life of the poor family and lower-class people and how limited their options are. This tragic, yet realistic, movie serves as a life lesson.
Article by Meisya Putri, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine.
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